Resist-Dyed Hanging with Biblical Scenes (500–550): Art, History and Details

Resist-Dyed Hanging with Biblical Scenes (500–550) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This hanging textile features biblical scenes that early Christian people would have recognized. At left, the upper register shows the Virgin Mary and Christ child on a cross-legged stool. As a Coptic inscription indicates, the three kings approach from the right, carrying gifts. The middle register on the left may depict the baptism of Christ while the other three figures separated by columns appear to illustrate a New Testament miracle in which Christ feeds a large crowd with only five loaves of bread and two fish. In the lower register, the Old Testament scene of the prophet Jonah being swallowed by a whale is still recognizable.

Object facts

• Title: Resist-Dyed Hanging with Biblical Scenes
• Date: 500–550
• Culture: Egypt, Byzantine period
• Type: Textile
• Technique: linen: resist-dyed, plain weave
• Dimensions: Overall: 99.7 x 104.8 cm (39 1/4 x 41 1/4 in.); Mounted: 111.1 x 114.3 x 2.5 cm (43 3/4 x 45 x 1 in.)
• Collection: T - Coptic
• Department: Textiles
• Accession number: 1951.400

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Shepherd, Dorothy G. "An Egyptian Textile from the Early Christian Period." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 39, no. 4 (1952): 66-75.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1958.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1966. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.